Christine Negroni riffs on aviation and travel and whatever else inspires her to put words to page.

Monday, April 8, 2013

PR Can't Disguise United's Smelly Last Place Finish

I never thought I'd be writing these words, but here I go, United take a lesson from American Airlines and learn how to say "Sorry."

Upon news that United was rock bottom last on the 2012 Airline Quality Rating, company spokesman Charlie Hobart told The Plain Dealer's Janet Cho, "United's operations improved significantly in the fall of 2012 and we continue to meet or exceed our on-time standards and set new records for performance."

Last fall, when American Airlines couldn't get a plane off the gate and in the air on time, when turbulence associated with AA's bankruptcy and subsequent vacating of union contracts caused the airline to cancel flights by the hundreds, an airline spokesman, Bruce Hicks said, "This is not the way American Airlines runs an airline. It's not the way we're going to be running it in the future." Fast forward a few months and the airline is even putting these words into the mouth of Mad Men superstar Jon Hamm in the ad he narrates for the new American.

"Its time to become better versions of ourselves, better than expected and more than before," goes Hamm's voice over. It's been a rough go for American, but at least they're not ignoring their jumbo jet-sized public relations problem.

One cannot say the same for Hobart & Co. at United. Mea culpa ain't in their vocabulary. From the United Breaks Guitars videos in 2009, to the airline's recent and separate removals of travelers, Matthew Klint who wries the blog, Live and Lets Fly for taking a photo and the unidentified parents of two young children whose plane was diverted so they could be booted off a flight after complaining about a graphic PG-13 film being shown on the cabin monitors, (read James Fallows' story about that here) something is very wrong this airline. When I say United's customer service is in the toilet, that's not just me overstating the case, just ask my sister.

While in Newark, waiting to board her plane to Hong Kong, on Sunday my dear sis sent me an email saying on the United flight to Newark, "the entire cabin smelled like a toilet." When she and her husband complained, "the flight attendant said they suspected the holding tanks for the toilets had not been emptied over night." Okay, s**t happens. What the flight attendant added, however, came as a surprise. She told my sister, "this is not an infrequent occurrence, particularly on the weekends." So when the professors at The Advanced Aviation Analytics Institute for Research at Purdue University issue a report saying that United is "the lowest rated airline" for 2012, it seems entirely credible. What I have a hard time believing is that no senior executive will step up and acknowledge that airplane on which my sister flew - the one scented with eau de toilette - is a metaphor. United, fess up, flush the tanks and start fresh. Post script: From Hong Kong, my sister wrote to me today to say she went online to the site given to her by United, to register a complaint about the smelly plane. She logged in, wrote the synopsis and hit "submit". In reply she got a message that the site was non working. "What an outfit!" she said.